Ted Savage has this to say to the company that wants to build a sludge composting plant near his Pompano Beach home: Pee-yew!

Really, Savage wonders, how much more should he and his neighbors in Crystal Lakes Golf Villas have to take? They already overlook a mountainous landfill and a garbage incinerator.

"The next thing we know, they'll be dumping nuclear waste over there and medical waste over there and who knows what kind of waste," said Savage, 83, one of about 420 homeowners in Crystal Lakes. "Surely there must be some place else in Broward County."

Savage and his neighbors are teaming with residents of nearby Independence Bay subdivision in Deerfield Beach to fight a proposal by International Process Systems to build a plant that would turn sludge into a soil additive similar to peat.

In composting, organic matter is allowed to rot so it can be added to soil, like a low-grade fertilizer. It can be a smelly process -- and odor complaints have closed several Broward composting plants in the past.

The homeowners have filed a protest with the state Department of Environmental Regulation, which must issue a permit for the sludge plant. And they are talking about packing their neighbors into chartered buses to attend hearings on it.

International Process Systems expected the opposition and built into its proposed project a host of controls to curb the odors and truck traffic that residents fear, project manager Chip Olsen said.

The plant would be built at 2420 NW 48th St., in an unincorporated area outside Pompano Beach, on a tract of land that is now home to the Waste Management Inc. landfill and the Wheelabrator Technologies Inc. incinerator.

Waste Management owns a majority share of Wheelabrator; International Process Systems is a Wheelabrator subsidiary.

Here is how International Process Systems said its compost plant would work:

As many as 40 composting troughs would be built inside a metal building, enclosed to keep odors in. In the troughs, sewage sludge would be mixed with yard clippings or some other wood-based material. A mixer, somewhat like a combine, would continually plow through the troughs, mixing and breaking up the material. Blowers below would keep air flowing through the sludge.

Bacteria and fungus would eat their way through the sludge and yard clippings, breaking them down. The process would create heat that would kill harmful bacteria and viruses found in sewage sludge.

Air systems would create negative pressure in the building, so that when doors are opened, air rushes in, but not out. Air inside the building would be continually pumped through a filter to kill odors.

International Process Systems would sell the compost to wholesale horticulture firms.

Most local utilities now ship sludge to Central Florida farms, where it is spread on the land. However, proposed federal rules may curb that practice. The county's sludge is dumped in the Waste Management landfill.

"We are the environmentalists here. We are not the bad guys," Olsen said. "You can't throw darts at this. You cannot."

The procedure has never been used in Broward, where odor complaints have closed composting plants in Pompano Beach and Fort Lauderdale. In Pembroke Pines, Reuter Recycling's garbage composting plant is temporarily closed while officials work on an odor control system.

"In the county, composting has stubbed its toe in the past," said Gary Fox, director of Broward County's Wastewater Management Division. "(But) from what we've seen of the IPS facility, it's one of those technologies we would consider because they can control odors."

Residents, however, remain skeptical. Even if odors are controlled, they said, they still aren't happy about one more huge garbage plant in their back yards.

"We're just creating a monster over in that little area," said Arthur Antin, 66, president of the Independence Bay Community Association, which represents the subdivision's 820 homes.

"Sometimes I feel as though we're surrounded by negative forces and we're a little island, rather than a bay."